Surrender (17 page)

The battle waged on for most of the remainder of the week, but the men seemed to come, finally, to an agreement they were all relatively satisfied with.

I was burning to know what that was because it was as clear as mud to me that it had to do with me, or at least the game plan they had originally come up with. Or maybe it had something to do with their agreement?

If it had to do with me, I finally decided, I was bound to know eventually. It was the ‘eventually’ thing that bothered me.

On Saturday, Cameron escorted me to spend a half day with my daughters. I hadn’t asked since that first time, but Gareth had taken me to visit the following weekend, and I was certain it was Kaelen who had arranged it.

I was actually relieved that Kaelen didn’t take me himself. I had enjoyed the day we had spent together way too much. If he had made a habit of it …. I couldn’t decide whether his reason for not repeating it was because he had endured all he could handle of

‘the family outing’, or because he was just too busy to go again, or if he was concerned that I might take it the wrong way. It mattered, but I told myself it didn’t so long as I got to spend a little time with the girls. It made being away from them all week a lot easier to bear regardless of why he did it, or why he decided it would be best not to repeat the experience of escorting me himself.

Cameron took us out to a movie. I thought the suggestion was made, most likely, because he had heard from Kaelen and Gareth what a handful the girls were when they were turned loose in an outdoor setting. Kaelen had taken us the zoo, and Gareth had picked the marine wildlife zoo. They had behaved very well, as far as I was concerned, considering the setting and the excitement of viewing all sorts of animals, which they loved, and being treated to ice cream and cotton candy. I was doubtful they were going to sit still for a movie, though, especially Ashley.

One thing I could definitely say for the clan—they had a way with women, and they seemed to have just as powerful an effect on young females as they did the older ones. The girls were just as taken with Cameron as they had been with Gareth and Kaelen, which actually surprised me in spite of the fact that I thought Cameron was just as handsome in his own way as the brothers.

He also seemed to have a very good grasp of what children liked. The movie he chose kept both of the girls on the edge of their seat, but they were glued to the screen throughout most of the movie. Ashley did keep asking questions throughout in a loud stage whisper, but Cameron, who had taken her onto his lap when she kept bounding out of her seat, didn’t seem to be the least bit disturbed by it.

Afterwards, he took us out to eat at a restaurant geared toward children, which not only had a menu to suit the ‘pallet’ of their age group, but also had an indoor/outdoor playground filled with other children running and climbing and squealing.

They might be seriously weird and kinky in my book, but there was no getting around the fact that the ‘clan’ was also a very good natured bunch, even when it came to dealing with very active, very inquisitive children. I wished their father had been even half as good with them. It seemed to me the girls were starved for male attention, but it SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 77

was something they had never gotten, not even before the divorce and certainly not since.

Their father was way too busy making points with his new woman’s children to spare a moment for his own, which I really resented.

It had also made it patently clear to me that his only reason for dragging me into court for custody was to torment me. I still didn’t understand why he wanted to. He had gotten everything, not only because he had hidden most of his assets before the break up, but also because he had had the money to hire a decent lawyer and I hadn’t. And the divorce had been entirely his fault. I had filed, but it had been after he had left me and taken up with the other woman. It was almost as if the bastard had thought I would sit home meekly and wait for him to have his fun and come back and was punishing me because I had had the audacity to thwart his intentions.

That might have been egotistical thinking on my part. He hadn’t shown any interest in coming back, but I couldn’t think of anything else to explain why I had become the enemy he must crush when none of it, except the filing, had been my doing.

It

was

completely
unreasonable. I might have been inclined to consider it the other side of love except that I had never felt like he loved me to start with. He had convinced me he did when I had married him, but thereafter I had only had the sense that I was something that belonged to him, not the sense that he cared whether I lived or died, much less felt affection.

I sensed as soon as I went down to the parlor that evening for dinner that something was in the air. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the very air seemed almost charged with excitement, and not all of it good. Kaelen was withdrawn to the point of coldness. Cameron smiled easily enough when I chanced to catch his gaze on me, but the easy, friendly way he had behaved toward me all day had vanished like mist. He wasn’t as withdrawn as Kaelen, but he seemed inclined to keep his distance. Even Chance, who was ordinarily the most cheerful, outgoing member of the group, seemed subdued.

Gareth’s behavior was harder to interpret than any of the others. Whenever I caught him looking at me, I was surprised to see a look that was so latent with heated, carnal hunger that goose bumps erupted all over me, and yet he made no attempt to come near me, seemed to be struggling to keep himself under a tight leash as if he was afraid to approach me for fear he would do something he shouldn’t.

I began to feel uneasy, too, not just because they seemed so on edge, but because they kept their distance.

A pattern had been established long since that, when we dressed for dinner, they behaved far more as if I was a lady and a guest than their private play thing. During the day whenever they happened to run across me, even if they only passed me in the hallway, they yielded to the impulse of the moment, sometimes merely fondling me, sometimes dragging me to the nearest place of relative privacy and comfort and either demanding to be pleasured—given head—or bent me over something and fucked the living daylights out of me.

The evenings, though, had been established as ‘civilized’ dining and then organized orgy. Regardless, I had always sensed anticipation in them, barely leashed excitement while they played at being civilized and waited for the fun to begin.

Now, for the most part, it seemed they were determined to ignore me.

The uneasiness in me, I finally decided, was because I felt as if I had lost their attention. In all honesty, I was surprised I had kept their interest as long as I had. I was SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 78

required to dress in such a manner as to go about fanning my tits and ass—and pussy at them. Even the dresses I wore to dinner revealed almost as much, though they at least paid lip service to covering me with some decency. I was only surprised that they hadn’t gotten bored with looking at them before now. Then, too, they had fairly unrestricted access to the same—tits, ass, and pussy—and they had taken full advantage of it. It was no wonder they were losing interest. It was more of a wonder that they hadn’t reached a surfeit of fucking before.

The realization depressed my spirits. I tried to tell myself that it was only from a business standpoint. I had been hired for six weeks, and we weren’t even quite halfway through that period and they had already lost interest. Would they dump me? And if they did, would I get full pay?

I needed all of the money. All of it would give me what I needed to pay the lawyer and leave a small nest egg to hold us over until I could get the job training I needed to make a decent income. Half of it wasn’t even going to cover the legal fees.

That was certainly a good part of my anxiety, probably the biggest part, but I had to face the fact that I was also distressed because I had begun to feel very attached to all of them, more for some than others.

I spent most of my time at dinner trying to convince myself that it was for the best, as long as I got paid what I needed. I couldn’t afford to get emotionally involved with them anyway, had been working very hard to keep from doing so. At least now that wasn’t going to be as big a problem for me as I had begun to fear it would be.

I was so focused on that as dinner ended and Gareth claimed me, escorting me up to my room that we had already arrived and he had closed the door behind us before I realized no one else was coming to the party.

I looked up at Gareth in confusion when he closed in on me and unclipped the single broach that held my ‘dress’ together at one shoulder, allowing it to fall to the floor.

He was already breathing heavily with excitement as he traced my form with his hands, brushing his thumbs back and forth over my nipples until they stood erect and then tracing a path downward to my hips and up again to massage my breasts.

He noticed my uneasiness after a moment and lifted his head to meet my gaze.

For a long moment, he held it. Finally, he swallowed thickly. “Tonight you’re mine,” he murmured, his voice a little hoarse.

His? A heady rush of heat went through me, but at the same time, my uneasiness increased. I moved shakily to the bed when he released me and began to pull off his own clothes.

“Pull back the covers,” he said as I started to climb on top of the coverlet.

I sent him a questioning glance over my shoulder, but I pulled the covers back before I climbed in.

Unnerved as I was, I couldn’t help but stare at him appreciatively as he dropped his shirt and toed his shoes off. His chest was beautiful--broad, sculpted, hard, and well-defined and so was his flat belly. Dark hair was sprinkled liberally across his hard pecs and between them. Beneath his male breasts, though, his skin was smooth except for the narrow trail of hair that arrowed downward to disappear beneath the waistband of his pants. He unbuckled his belt as I watched, unfastened his pants, and drew the zipper downward, revealing the end of the trail as he hooked his thumbs in his pants and shorts and peeled them downward. The hair on his lower belly formed a dark nest for the sleek, SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 79

engorged cock that sprouted there, and that part was as beautiful as the rest of him.

He met my gaze as he straightened from removing his pants, holding it as he placed a knee on the edge of the bed and crawled toward me like a stalking cat. My heart leapt with anticipation as I watched his approach, need washing through me in a hot tide that settled low in my belly and ebbed outward so that my skin prickled with awareness even before he settled his chest against mine and began to explore my body with shaking hands.

This was bad, I thought dimly as heat rose into my mind and began to burn up reason, very bad. There was an aspect of group sex that made it far more elemental, impersonal, more animalistic and hedonistic, leaving very little room for a sense of closeness, a sense of belonging.

This was different, vastly different. I could very easily slip under the impression of being special, being important—being with my lover instead of a man who had paid for my ‘affections’. I didn’t want that. I couldn’t
afford
that emotionally speaking. I was already far too fond of Gareth.

There was no distancing myself, though. I felt his touch and
knew
it was his touch. I felt his mouth and
knew
it was his mouth. There was no dizzy confusion, no way to focus on it strictly as a nameless, faceless fondling that merely aroused me.

It was Gareth’s dark head I peered down at through heavy eyes as he bent to torment my breasts in the style that was his and his alone. The way he teased me with the edge of his teeth, bringing me to the very edge of pain and then lathed and suckled my nipples until he set me on fire, made me writhe and groan as if I was lying on a bed of hot coals. I couldn’t be still. I couldn’t resist the urge to thread my fingers through his cool, silky hair and stroke his head as he gave me pleasure, couldn’t resist the urge to skate my hands along his broad shoulders and hard, muscular back and arms.

Gareth’s heated breath and scent teased at my nostrils, invaded my lungs as I gasped and struggled to suck air into them and coiled inside of me like a seductive aphrodisiac until I had spread my legs in want, arching against his hip and thigh to encourage him to appease the ache he had evoked inside me.

He was in no hurry, despite the fact that he shook all over, that I could feel harder and harder tremors rippling through him. The more desperate I grew, the harder I fought to get my hands on his engorged cock and shove it inside of me. I couldn’t reach low enough to catch hold of it with my hands. Thwarted of that, I curled my leg around his and arched against him, but that only drove me to a more impatient frenzy because all I could manage to do was rub my exposed nether lips against his rock hard erection.

I began to mutter his name beseechingly, nuzzling his face and neck, tugging at his earlobe with the edge of my teeth.

He shuddered, but he moved between my thighs at last, dragged the head of his cock back and forth along my cleft until I dug my fingernails into his shoulders in an agony of impatience and finally connected with my opening and surged inside of me. I arched upward and went rigid when he did, squeezing my eyes closed to savor the exquisite delight of feeling him stretching me, filling me almost beyond capacity.

I was so wet it took no more than three surges to seat him against my womb.

“Mmmm, Gareth,” I moaned ecstatically, “you feel so good!” He shuddered, uttering a hoarse, growling groan and seeking my mouth blindly. I turned my face away as his lips grazed the edge of mine, offering him my neck instead.

SURRENDER Kimberly Zant 80

He let out a ragged breath, sucked at my neck, and began to thrust slowly in and out of me.

Again, he sought my lips.

Again, I evaded him.

He moved his mouth to my ear. “A thousand dollars, baby. I’ll give you a thousand extra if you’ll let me kiss you.”